Knott's Berry Farm
I've chosen a selection of vintage Knott's Berry Farm scans for today. First up is a pair of photos featuring the Antique Auto Ride (later the Tijuana Taxis). The slides are undated, but I'm going to guess that they are from the early 1960s, based on the boy's buzzcuts. Two steering wheels helped to prevent tantrums and tears. The Antique Auto Ride had two different kinds of vehicles, Maxwell Speedsters and Ford Model T Runabouts. The blue car below is a Maxwell.
Next is this photo of the Church Of The Reflections, though nobody knows why it had that name. This slide was so washed-out that you could hardly see the image, but Photoshop helped. Hey, there's the train!
And finally, next to Old MacDonald's Farm was the Seal Pool. Full of seals, ya see. They ate little anchovies all day long; the guy to the left is hoping he can get Sammy to leap up for his treat. But Sammy has his pride. "What am I, a funny clown to you? I'm an artist!". All of the trees and blooming bougainvillea make the park feel very pleasant.
16 comments:
Major-
More fun images from Knott's.
"Two steering wheels helped to prevent tantrums and tears".
I think when I open up my next daycare center I'm going to name it Tantrums and Tears.
Thanks, Major.
Buzzcuts, blue jeans, and stripy t-shirts; the boys' uniform of that era. It was for me, anyway.
I've always liked (evergreen) magnolia trees, as well. Especially their dinner plate-sized white blossoms. We had a deciduous magnolia at our previous house. It had many nice pink blossoms, but still couldn't compare to the glossy-leafed, huge blossomed variety.
I think I like the blue and gold Maxwell car better than the Ford. Probably just because of the color combo.
That's a nice photo of the U.S. Post Office, and surrounding buildings. Colorful, good lighting... very Ghost Town-y. Funny how such a short-lived endeavor like the Pony Express persists in our knowledge of history.
All the pleasant surroundings and pretty plants almost makes one forget about the small, cramped, inadequate living conditions of the seals.
Thanks for the Knott's pics, Major.
The car ride actually had three different names. The first one was Merry-Go-Round Auto Ride (because it was located next to the Merry-Go-Round, in it's original location). Bud Hurlbut ran both attractions. He designed the layout for the auto ride, but you are right about Arrow building the cars and the track. The layout was really nice, because it had different elevations and went over bridges and through tunnels. When Knott's got rid of the attraction, for a 1987 revamp of Fiesta Village, Bud moved the ride over to his own park in Riverside, CA (Castle Park). I've ridden it at Castle Park, and while it's nice that it still exists, it now has a flat layout instead of various elevations. Each steering wheel had it's own working horn when it was at Knott's. When I rode it at Castle Park, I honked the horn, but the ride operator seemed surprised that I knew about the horn. He said that the car I was in was the only vehicle with a working horn. And yes, I might have been a little too big to be riding it, but I rode it with three other adults (all in separate cars). One of those adults was John Waite, who worked for Bud Hurlbut for years, both at Knott's and at Castle Park and was involved with developing Knott's earliest Halloween Haunts. When he wants to go on a former Knott's/Hurlbut attraction, you don't say, "I'll sit this one out!" Plus, I wanted to relive my childhood. Wheeee!
The Wells Fargo building was/is the "backdoor" to the General Store. The stagecoach ticket office was located one street over, across from the Stagecoach loading area. The building is still standing behind the Bottle House, but the windows have been shuttered and the space used for storage, for decades now.
Thanks for the vintage trip to Knott's, Major!
For most of its life that US POST OFFICE was just a facade , but for a short time it operated as a official US postal office where letters and parcels could be shipped and the dozens and dozens of postcards and souvenir pre-printed letters could be postmarked and mailed.
Santa’s Village locations in Dundee Illinois and Santa Cruz featured the ARROW Ford Model T & Maxwell antique auto ride system …. They were fairly common around the country as it was one of their less expensive offerings. After 1964 the larger AAROW antique auto systems debuted and were sold into the 1980’s . The Roaring 20’s Airfield “GASOLINE ALLEY” attraction was one of the later offerings.
Knott’s before any coasters marred the skyline. Charming.
I think your slide of the Church of the Reflections is backwards. The lake was to the north and the tracks were to the west of the church. Compare with this 1962 map (more vintage Knott’s maps here).
The Seal Pool must have had a net electrical charge. That would explain why it’s filled with seal ions.
Thanks, Major!
Chuck, I think you’re right on about the church photo being flipped. Good catch!
If you didn't know these photos were of Knott's...you may not think that they were all related...all such different vibes and such. I would rather drive a model T than an Autopia car...on a recent...(and last) ride on Autopia, my thoughts were "does this track ever end?"...the drive around the parkways was fun...but those motors are so loud...I think I prefer an electric Model T: with hills and valleys or not. The Ghost town is wonderful, and I'm wondering what kind of permit you needed back then to move these historic buildings in...or build them ramshakle-esque? There is an old church down the street from me that looks pretty much the same as the reflections church...was there church things going on inside of there? Sunday services at Knott's, with a chicken dinner afterwards. Kind of makes commercial sense. Seals are funny and fun...kind of like puppies that swim...but with voracious appetites. I'm not a fan of captive wildlife like this, but I'm sure the seals had a grand old time in that tub. Question is...how do they keep the water so clear? Same with Shamu...it can't be chlorinated...can it? Super duper filter? Hmmm....this is a rabbit hole waiting to happen. Thanks Major!
I love old Knotts and I know we visited in this era, but I don’t remember the cars at all. The blue and brass is a good look. Is this ride still going at the other park?
The seal pool picture is vaguely familiar, but I might be conflating it with the one at the Fresno Zoo. That’s a nice picture. Eucalyptus and Bougainvillea are classic California landscape combo.
Some years back we visited Genoa NV, the last town on the road west before the Sierras. It was the terminal outpost of the Pony Express with a nice museum. The mail was carried over mountains on foot by Snowshoe Johnson and delivered to Placerville. Wells Fargo has outlasted the Pony Express because the PE never offered ATMs, mortgages, or checking accounts.
Thanks Major!
JG
Nanook, “I think when I open up my next daycare center I'm going to name it Tantrums and Tears”… soon you will be the KING of daycare centers!
JB, what was it with the stripy shirts, anyway?? I used to live in a place that had beautiful magnolia trees right next to the sidewalk. I came home one day and found that the city had cute every one of them down. They were not causing the sidewalks to heave or anything, so to this day I have no idea why they did that terrible thing. I kind of like the Maxwell better too, the rounded hood is nice than the angled one. The Pony Express was such an exciting and amazing idea, I think Mark Twain even wrote about them, it’s no wonder that we still talk about them! I do feel bad for animals in captivity, and always hope that they were generally happy.
TokyoMagic!, huh, I don’t know if I knew about the name “Merry-Go-Round Auto Ride”. I’m glad they didn’t call it the “Trash Can Auto Ride” because it was near a trash can. Good old Bud Hurlbut, what would Knott’s have been without him? Having a ride go on various elevations is a huge deal, to me its part of what made our Peoplemover so great. Even the Autopia did it to some degree. I am sure I never rode on the antique autos, much to my shame, looking at today’s photos I wish I had. Very cool that you just happened to have the car with the remaining working horn! You rode with John Waite, singer of the hit song “Missing You”??? Wow! (I know, I know, different John Waite). Boy, you sure know your Knott’s Berry Farm, I’m always impressed.
Mike Cozart, I don’t know why it really matters, but it would be fun to mail things to people and have a Knott’s Berry Farm postmark. Though supposedly things that you mailed from a Disneyland mailbox did not have a Disneyland postmark, just an Anaheim one? Funny that you mention Santa’s Village, I literally just scanned a slide that has a great photo of the antique auto ride from there, and was certain that Arrow Development must have been involved with that one too. I will post that one around Christmas, of course!
Chuck, it looks like you are right - if I recall correctly, the slide was not in a commercial slide mount, but was home-mounted, so there was no obvious “front” or “back” side. “Seal Ions”, OOF.
Steve DeGaetano, scanning a slide of a church backwards is of the devil!
Bu, I actually sort of like the the current Autopia has a nice long track, though in my memory the gas pedal takes quite a lot of “oomph” to keep it down, which gets tiring. I figure if it is hard for me, how hard must it be for little kids? Of course I have very delicate legs. I can’t say I prefer one kind of car (antique autos) to another (more sporty vehicles), they both have their charms. I’m not sure if Walter Knott used some of the people who also built movie sets? SoCal had lots of them, and they would be expert at making an otherwise sturdy new wood building look like it had been there for 100 years. I assume that the seals were occasionally removed from the pool and the thing was given a thorough scrubbing. But I really don’t know.
JG, I believe that the ride is still operating at Castle Park. I regret that I didn’t go when I had a chance to go with TokyoMagic! and K. Martinez, I think I was worried about my long drive home, which in retrospect was dumb. Oh well. So the Pony Express let a person WALK the mail over the snowy Sierra passes?? That doesn’t sound speedy at all. I suppose if there was eight feet of snow, the ponies couldn’t handle it.
Santas’s Village in Dundee Illinois and Santa Cruz featured the smaller Arrow Development 2 - seater merry -go-round automobile ( BTW - that was what ARROW called their system at the time ….I don’t think Knott’s or hurlbutt came up with that basic name. The Santa’s Village CA -SKYFOREST had the later four seater Arrow “Cadillac” antique autos and were purchased used at auction from the Avis Rental Attraction at the end of the New York Worlds Fair. Only some of cars went to Santa’s Village Skyforest … the other NYWF autos went to other parks.
Sue saw that Santas Village Dundee Illinois has re opened but I noticed the Arrow Antique Autos operating are the larger versions … I thunk I read that some of them came from Astro World in Texas …sadly it’s my understanding that none of the Dundee Santa’s Village attractions are original as after closing most of all the original attractions were auctioned off.
I guess the kid in the blue hat got to ride with both of his brothers, unless his brother in the stripey shirt had a ride in a spaceship near the speed of light or something.
In the Maxwell picture, the part connected to the guiderail looks almost like it gets electric power from it like the third rail on a subway train. I wonder if any of these rides were ever converted to electric.
I don’t think during Walter Knott’s time there were any real regulations regarding relocating old or abandoned structures , the majority Knott’s relocated were structures that were moved to Buena Park and re-assembled into “Frankenstein” buildings … creating their own designs like the SILVER DOLLAR SALOON, SHERIFF’s OFFICE , GHOST TOWN GRILL , GOLDIES PLACE , WELLS FARGO OFFICE , POST OFFICE etc…. A few others were mostly re-assembled keeping their front facades intact like GOLD TRAILS HOTEL , MULE HIRE , GENERAL MERCHANDISE STORE, WESTERN OUTTFITTERS … and some … but very few included the entire original building like BLACKSMITH , IOWA SCHOOL HOUSE and the RIVIERA SCHOOL HOUSE . Others have caused confusion and incorrect origins have been passed on like THE GRIST MILL on school house road . It is said to have been relocated from Yuba City california. Only the grist mill STONE WHEELS came from there while the existing structure was built “new” from several historic structure pieces.
Sadly today many of the original buildings of ghost town : authentic of vintage Knott’s creations are deteriorating or cannot meet current building codes and are being demolished and rebuilt … with newer buildings that sometimes do a good job or re-creating what was there …. And other times not so good. Tokyo Magic has some EXCELLENT old posts showing some of these demolishing and rebuildings in his blog MEET THE WORLD IN PROGRESS .
I’ve mentioned this before but I have about 80 books on ghost towns and mining camps … and several mention the lawsuits and protection drives done by dozens of citizens and historical groups in the 40’s and 50’s to protect historic buildings in their communities or towns from Walter Knott’s coming and trying to purchase original surviving gold rush era architecture and saving it from being sent to Knott’s Berry Farm. One of the biggest lawsuits came from ELKHORN Montana and their beautiful Masonic Hall …. I guess that was one that gota-away and really irritated Walter Knott’s!
In the 40’s and into the 1970’s it was common for historic structures to be moved and relocated with other non - related structures creating preservation “villages” and historical town recreations … especially when all the freeways were coming thru and lots of modern development was occurring. While that does happen still now and then in extreme situations where a structure might be lost , most preservation groups try to keep the buildings in their original location.
One thing that really shocks me is the vast amounts of mid century architecture that is being demolished …. Faster than Victorian or art deco examples ever were - and despite how popular 1950’s and 60’d architecture is. I think part of the problem is that these examples tend to be much larger structures and it may be difficult to find money for saving or re-use . As opposed to a small 10 room Hotel in Prescott Arizona built in 1868 being sent to a Berry farm in California.
"Seal ions"..... Hoooooo boy!
Major, if you’ll turn to page 91 of your copy of “Knott’s Preserved,” you’ll see why the church has that name.
Oh, and another book I have on Knott’s says that Walter Knott himself named the church because anyone of any faith could go inside and meditate, or reflect.
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